Haters gonna...hate?

Yes.  It's true.  All I've done for the past couple of months is apologize for my lack of posting.  But, hell.  It is what it is.  And that cliche phrase means that sometimes other business takes precedence.  And for the last 10 weeks that's meant: Marie & Skip coming to Maui for some days.  My last days of work.  My last days (for now...?) on Maui.  San Fransisco for a few days.  Maine for ten or so days, which was surprisingly new and decidedly different than any other Maine experiences to date.  A couple of Portland trips, the latter leading to an evening in Burlington and a suddenly-booked flight to NYC, where i currently sit on a couch at 5:30am and my innerworkings are forcing me to blog right now because I do, actually, enjoy this goofiness.

And...yes.  As far as the internet goes, I've still got it.  Don't believe me?  Scope this!!!!!!!

It looks as though moose is a dog  A dog that looks like a piece of run over shit, but apparently it's a dog all the same.  This person takes pictures of his moose in precarious situations, then posts them to an online photo site.  Moose seems like a pretty cool dude.  Click on "moose on stuff" on the page to see his two page and twelve or so pictures of perfect art.  Well played, sir or madam.  And read the bio.  Moose is a god-damned rock star.

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I have the hiccups.  Hiccups are fucking lame.  Carry on.

Square one, my slate is clear..

Aloha.  In case you forgot, my name is Matt and I used to be a pretty serious blogger up until a couple of months ago.  Then, it appears, I quit cold turkey.  Let me see if I can get back into things over the next couple of weeks and months; Lord knows I don't think I'll have anything better to do.

This post finds me in San Francisco staying in Big Black Eric's apartment while Eric is in New Orleans.  Pretty silly, I know.  I like San Francisco.  I've been here since midday on Tuesday and I'd love to spend a few more days here but with Mother's Day on Sunday I've decided to keep my red eye flight Friday evening.  I love you, Ma.  Something tells me I'll be looking to make it back out this way later on in the summertime, though.  There's a three day music festival in Golden Gate Park around the middle of August which has caught my eye.  Attendance will be determined based on how motivated I am following Bonnaroo.  I have a hunch I'll be pretty fired up to continue touring and the lineups are different enough that it should prove more than entertaining if I can make things work.

I spent most of Wednesday wandering the northern half of the city on foot, and for a city of a million people it seemed surprisingly clean and well, relatively safe.  The weather has been tremendous, too.  I had no idea what to expect as the city is located in Northern California but it's been close to 80 the three days I've been here and tomorrow sounds no different.  The sun isn't quite as strong as on the Valley Isle but it still felt nice wandering around in shorts and sandals for half a day.  I made it to the corner of Haight and Asbury as part of a little hippy self-exploration but was pretty bummed to find a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop there.  Normally New England-based companies popping up far away put a smile on my face, but this seemed a little to contrived.  O well, that's capitalism for you.

Don't Hate.  Haight...get it?  Didn't think so..

I spent awhile walking into all of the goofy head shops looking for a replacement for my old Grateful Dead shirt from back in '96 but had no luck.  Seems to be a trend, I've never seen another shirt like it.  I don't have a picture of it but there's not much left of it anymore.  Many, many holes.  It has to be my favorite shirt, though I don't wear it often because it's destroyed and most everyone finds it inappropriate to wear in most public settings.  Some day I'll find a new one and hopefully take better care of it - dryers are the enemy.

From here?  Back to Maine.  Hopefully getting some hiking in right off the bat.  Put some air in my bike tries and get rolling around town.  I'm quite certain I won't be buying a car in the near future; fuck gas prices.  Truth be told I'm a little nervous about heading back to town.  I haven't been away for very long but at the same I feel like I'm going to grow tired quite quickly of discussing my motivations for moving back.  I DON'T KNOW WHY I DID.  Heh, heh.  Felt right at the time, so going to make sure it's right.

One of the first things I'm going to do when I get home is wash my hair.  Without the ocean to freshen up the mop the last couple days I'm already feeling unhappy with its present state and I can only foresee things getting worse.  That, and I've got some natty dreads forming in the back and I feel like those are an all or nothing kind of a hairstyle until I end up a homeless vagrant.  Which I hope doesn't occur anytime soon.  I hope Cindy at Taboo can still work her magic because I'm not sure I've got a home remedy up my sleeve to completely solve this problem.  That and I feel like the first time you wash your hair in a given year should be a special event, especially considering we're five months into the year.  Oops, guess I just kept forgetting.

On that lovely thought I must be going to bed.  I'm wheels up in less than 24 hours and I've still got the Golden Gate Bridge to try to check out.  I did make it to the pretty Queen Anne Victoria's across from Alamo Square.  And it now appears there were a couple of babes in bikini tops so that wasn't bad, either and provided me an opportunity to take a good, albeit sketchy to some, picture from the top of the greenspace.  Heeeeeeeeeey, aqualung..

And as I'm a sucker for a sunset..

...I took this while I was attending my first ever Bates alumni event.  It was at a yacht club down close to Marina Green, clearly right on the water.  Eric made me wear shoes and a collared shirt; I was unimpressed and upon arrival deemed it completely unnecessary though moot because I brought neither tshirt nor sandals to the event.  I stepped outside with a glass of wine and a snack for 20 or so minutes to take it all in.  It was a nice middle to my Wednesday.  Every now and again Bates proves its worth, and I found this to be one of those times.  Free wine and sunsets: That's what this guy does.

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I watched music videos for the first time tonight in forever.  I happened to flip to either Fuse or Palladia (can't remember which..) And Grace and the Nocturnals' video for their song Paris came on.  Pretty quality video; Grace and Catherine look sexy and they brought in some Moulin Rouge-style dancers in braziers and panties and feathers and shit.  Oo la la, indeed.  But I found this new Beastie Boys video to be even more impressive:

Pay attention to the cast of characters, it's pretty silly.

Catch you back on the east coast.  Cheers (And I think I've finally figured out how to upload pictures from my old-school cellular telephone onto thefacebook.  So, stay tuned for that tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day.  Exciting shit, I know..).

It's April, fools..

..and apparently New England is getting hammered with snow today...and there's nothing very funny about that. It's April; it's time to cut that snow shit. If I can't hit the links at Fairlawn immediately when I get back to the 207 then I'm going to be pretty bummed out. Well, not really, but shit, it's April. I've heard enough about snow until next year.

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I had the last two days off from work and that was tremendous. I can't make up my mind as to whether or not I enjoy non-traditional weekends. It's weird for me to have my workweek start on a Friday and end on a Tuesday, as it has for the last couple of months. Weeks still start on Monday so I tend to get confused as to what day it is quite a bit. But at the same time it's pretty nice having a business day off to go to the bank or the post office when the need arises and not feel like I need to scramble around to fit it in on a normal workday. I've been meaning to make a dentist appointment for about nine months now and I still haven't quite squeezed that into my schedule so hopefully I'll be able to get on that on of these days, too. My pearly whites could use a little scrub from a friendly dental hygienist. It's been, well, a little while.

As Thursday happened to be my “Sunday,” I watched some Celtics on the television and the start of the baseball season while I cleaned the house. A cleaning was long overdue and the young gentleman who had been sleeping on an air mattress behind the living room couch for the last four months headed back east Thursday, so I figured the timing was right. Washed dishes. Laundered. Picked up the trash and returnables and recycling that had been slowly accumulating for quite some time in various places around our home. Then took out the trash and returnables and recycling and placed them in their appropriate receptacles. Vacuumed  (And, as our vacuum is a piece of shit and gets clogged every 30 or 45 seconds, this required me to fix the vacuum three times before our carpets were returned to pristine condition..). Heavy duty wipe-downs of the kitchen table, coffee table, sink, stove, and kitchen counters. Ya, there was a lot to be done. So while it was a struggle to get myself out of the house before six this evening to get myself down to the local farmer's market in time to score a half-priced tofu and avocado sangwich, it felt like a fairly productive day for not really leaving the house. Score one for me, as this will be the last time I do anything to clean up until it's time for us to move out at the end of the month. I think I've done my part for a good while.

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I drank close to nine liters of water today. I think I've peed more than twenty times. I guess you could say it was a good day. Here's to April getting off to a good start. Cheers.

Intruding thoughts..

I walked into my room last night from the kitchen with all of the lights in the house off and stumbled around for a short while as I tried to find the lamp on my nightstand to turn on that would provide my room with some illumination in the wee hours of the morn. Since December we've had a guy sleeping in our living room on an air mattress so I try to be quasi-considerate when I'm awake and he's asleep. I mean, clearly I'm still kind of an asshole because I'll stay up surfing the wave that is the “internet” in the kitchen while he's trying to sleep, but at least I do it with the lights off. But, shit, when I get home from work gmail and facebook status updates can't wait.  And we can only pirate "internet" in our kitchen so being an asshole is kind of my only option, or I'd have a frowny face on while I try to go to bed, and I try to never go to sleep with a frown on my face.

Wow, anyways I went to flip the button that turns the light on my nightstand on and I think, “What the hell would I do if, when this light turns on and fills the room, there's someone else besides me in there?” Wouldn't that be a pretty fucked up situation? It would blow my mind. Like, wouldn't that just ruin the rest of your life?There are few things that leave people scarred for life and I think that would be one of them (Another would be rape but rape's fucked up and I don't want to talk about it and all rapists should die so let's just move on..). I mean, even if the person in my room that wasn't me wasn't doing anything. Or if they were asleep. It doesn't matter – my schema of safety and security within my house would be irreparably shattered. Yeah, SHATTERED.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd do if something happened to me like what happened to Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men when he gets into his car, starts driving, looks into his rearview mirror and homeboy's chilling in his back seat. WHAT THE SHIT?! I go through this scenario a lot late at night when I'm getting to my car. I make sure to check the back seat before I get in – I ain't no fool.

It's kind of like whatshername, Helen Hunt, maybe? in Pay It Forward, when she comes home and homeless people are kicking it in her kitchen having sangwiches because the kid who sees dead people decided it would be appropriate to invite them home for sangwiches, because, well, because the kid believes sangwiches taste better under a roof than by a trashcan fire. But, holy shit.

This would be a good teaching moment for a parent, however. “Listen, son (or daughter, but we'll stick to son because the kid who saw dead people was framed as having a penis and self-identifying as a stereotypical “male,” as defined by western culture..). Have you ever heard the saying, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime?' You have? Great. So, next time you think to yourself, 'I'd like to feed the homeless,' DON'T FUCKING BRING THEM HOME.”

Yeah, it would go something like that.

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In other news Coach Roach commented on an old photo album I had thrown up long ago from early college summers in the A-Town and it brought me back to what thefacebook used to be like before it became facebook and half of the planet became a member. Back in the good old days when it was a network for college students to stalk people whom they were too shy or, for whatever reason, unable to actually communicate with face-to-face. And, just now, this makes me wonder why poking has become so taboo these days. Or, was it always taboo? I don't think it was taboo, and I don't think it's taboo now. I'm still a poker and I'm not afraid or ashamed to admit it. Pokes make me feel good, and they should make you feel good, too. Poke: the best conversation starter since, well, saying hello.

Thefacebook back in the day seemed so much cooler because it was kind of an exclusive club. “Oh, you're still in high school? GETTHEFUCKOUTTAHERE.” “Oh, you're old? GETHEFUCKOUTTAHERE.” Now everyone and their mother (literally) is on thefacebook. No, I take that back. Everyone's on facebook. But, for the lucky ones, we can harken back to the days when pokes, posts, and pictures could only be seen by your goofy-ass, college-enrolled friends on the[original]facebook. Or, are we actually unlucky as we long ago lost this debaucherous sanctuary? Quite the brain buster, if you ask me..

Light weight.  Cheers.

Ides of March cometh and goeth..

And I'm without intelligent words of wisdom.  So, I'll just post a good tune for your listening pleasure and I'll try things again tomorrow.  I now say, "Goodnight;" though, I expect for most of you this will greet you as a, "Good morning."

Cheers.

Beginning semi-introspective writing...now:

Instead of spending time writing I've been doing my best to finish a couple of books over the last week or so. I enjoy reading immensely so I find it to be kind of a bummer when I don't find time to read. When I had a flat bike tire it was easy to find time because most mornings I'd take the bus down to work so I'd have time to read on the bus and more time to read before my shift started, but I'd lose time in the evenings because instead of only needing fifteen minutes to get home on the saddle I was at the mercy of the thumb gods. It's not easy hitchhiking after dark, especially with my goofy mustache, but more often than not something worked out before I got too far north. This, however, lead to two situations where I was without food to eat for a couple of days at a time because, by ten o'clock, I wasn't asking to get dropped off at the supermarket when I'd need to find another lift home from there. A pain in my ass, if you ask me, but no one asked me so I just made it work.

Anywhoo I've been able to read two books that I got myself for Christmastime. Just today I finished up Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory, more or less a biography of Pat Tillman, a former NFL player who enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire while on patrol in Afganistan. It was a pretty good read, well-researched and well-written. And, ironically, prior to this I took a leisurely stroll through Acid Dreams - The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond. This contained sort of a who's who of big name people from the fifties, sixties, and seventies and their experiences turning on. Beat writers, artists, politicians, millionaires, scientists, musicians, all were dabbling in psychedelics, many of which were developed and tested by the CIA and other government organizations in an effort to develop a truth serum to be used during the Cold War. Interesting read, all the same, sprinkled with excellent quotes from many different characters. Caused me to add a few titles to my “To Read” list and also brought my attention to some music I hadn't listened to in a little bit. The 13^th Floor Elevators always put a smile on my face.

Instead of reading and writing, though, most evenings have been spent with leafy greens and the television on, which makes me feel even more lazy than usual. As I indicated a few days ago, Stop Making Sense has been on more or less repeat recently at 25 Heather Lane, Apt #115. And, really, I can think of few better ways to spend an evening than pressing play, getting in a Talking Heads trance for about 90 minutes and then coming to “Once in a Lifetime” and literally wondering “Well, how did [we] get here?” I don't have time to delve into great detail about my Stop Making Sense experiences, but, I'm a fan, and I find it remarkable how each song on the DVD is at once similar and entirely different from each of the other songs. I appreciate the band, the DVD, and their commitment to creativity more with each viewing. It continues, and probably will always, boggle my mind in one way or another.

Another evening last week found me reuniting with The Big Lebowski. This was glorious. Sometime during my shuffle of things in July (I think.It might have been October...my memory isn't that good..) my copy of Lebowski disappeared and it's yet to surface. I'm not sure if I left it somewhere at home, if I loaned it to someone (I don't think this is the case. I'd like to think I'd be better at keeping tabs on one of the THREE dvd's I have, well, had out here. Now I'm down to just Wayne's World and Stop Making Sense. That's really all I need, I guess. Also, I found it funny but when I was typing dvd's I missed the 's' key and hit the 'a' key. I don't care who you are: that's funny.) or it just got left behind one of the places I stayed in between. So it had been a good few months since The Dude and I had a chance to kick back together and it was especially nice to have that time to reconnect. So, yes, “The Dude time” is more important than “The 'Pad time.” My apologies to those affected.

This all leads me to ponder whether six weeks is an incredibly long amount of time or an incredibly short amount of time. I've got about six more weeks here and this is causing me to go in many directions about where I'm at in life. I think I'm taking my job too seriously, which is kind of silly considering I wipe down dirty tables for a living. And, for whatever reason, I'm choosing to leave this pretty good job, in a pretty nice climate, with pretty good weather, and pretty good scenery, and pretty pretty girls to...move back in with my parents, unemployed? What the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know. I'm finding myself bored out here, and I'm quite certain that working in a restaurant, especially a restaurant six thousand or so miles from my hometown, is not something I'm be interested in doing for even a minor portion of my future. But, holy shit, it's going to be tricky to extricate myself from this place.

I'm at a point now, where, more or less, I know I want to get busy living very soon, I'm just not quite certain I know what I want to do to get busy living. Living out here for well over a year has kind of put me into a holding pattern: I know I'd like to take another step in life, I'm just not sure in what direction I should be stepping. Compiling this angst is the very place I'm heading back to is where I felt stalled out and trapped before I...moved out here. I've resigned myself to the fact I may go home and be somewhat miserable and I'm okay with this, just the simple act of moving home for a summer to pursue activities I've been wanting to do for a little while now while I was working makes me wonder if, while not working, I'll actually feel in a position to spend money to goof off when I've become kind of terrible at spending money.

How, for example, am I going to be able to go on hikes and travel places unless I buy a car? Guess I have to buy a car. F. My problem with savings is, well, I see it as savings. Not spendings. So, once money enters my savings account it has a tendency to stay there. I'm pretty sure I'd surprise quite a few people with the total, considering the goof-off things I've done for the past couple of years, but am I saving to the point where it is negatively impacting my everyday life? I don't know...or should I, instead of using a savings account, be looking to deposit some funds in a tax shelthered IRA or some other kind of retirement account? I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO SOMEONE WHO'S A FINANCIAL PLANNER PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO ASAP.

Savings is good, I suppose, but shit, I've saved this money so I can take time off and have fun, didn't I?! Or do I just save it to save it? The world may never know...until I get home and I get started.

I'd really like to buy a road bike this summer but I'm already hesitant to because Ma-dukes is no longer working for Leon Leonwood's sporting goods and outdoor gear company. I'm not sure if I'll be able to pony up full price for something like that. I'd love a kayak, too. And I'm not sure yet but I might be in the market for a new hike stove and I'm considering trading in my tent for a slightly larger model. But, F, full price for all of this hoopla? And maybe new boots, too?! And then I'd need racks for the kayak and potentially the bike, too. This is a sticky situation. Hell, maybe I should just try to get a job there working a couple of days a week for a couple of months. That's actually not a terrible idea, come to think of it.............

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Returning to car talk for a minute, right now I'm torn between getting an old Volvo 240 wagon when I get home or getting a little bit newer, little bit nicer pickup truck, for the purpose of capping the bed and having it act, more or less, like a wagon. I could sleep in the back of either, not that I'm planning anything like that......

But what are some thoughts on this? I've already done the Volvo thing once to mixed reviews from myself. While I had it the Blue Bird was a dream to drive and cost very little to keep on the road, but at the same time she started to fall apart not long after we became partners. So, the whole age-factor could unnerve me a little bit, and I'm not sure how many Volvo wagons were made with manual transmissions. The last thing I want in a new-to-me car is an automatic. That's just amateur hour. But, see? More questions that I'm asking myself. And I won't be doing anything with these thoughts for close to two months? Why the shit am I fixated on them now? Maybe I'm a worrier. Fretting over things gives me something to do to pass the time and this fretting allows me to actually feel like life is somewhat difficult, when most things out here are skewed more towards the easy living, joke kind of lifestyle. In a sense, the easy living lifestyle I enjoy so much out here is motivating me to search for a career more up my alley, as I know I can easily not think, blink, and have been out here for another few years and wonder, “Well, how did I get here?” And, no, Ma, while I find Pat Tillman inspiring for the choices he made, a four or five year commitment is something that doesn't really do it for me.

All this is probably just fluff to cover the fact that by this time next year I'll be a farmer on a quiet spread, tending to my crops like they did in the old days. Or, maybe not.

Cheers.

NEWSFLASH:

Nothing crazy happened.  Had to stop watching the video from Japan, that was some sad stuff.

More to come later.  Carry on.

Cheers.

For about the past week non-work hours have been occupied mostly by:

To schedule a screening: you know my name.  Look up the number.  Cheers.

Broken, Broken..

As luck would have it the day after I posted a love fest about the tandem bicycle the front tire went flat while I was at work and I had to walk it home. I still haven't got it fixed yet because I'm lazy. Most all of last week I took the bus, finagled rides , and at times threw a thumb out to get from point A to B and it seems like it's going to be the same kind of week this time around because I don't see myself finding much time to make it to the bike shop in Lahaina until the weekend. Full disclosure: The front tire has a couple of broken spokes on it so I don't want to ride it again until the spokes are fixed and the rim is trued. I'm more than capable of patching a bicycle tube and have all of the necessary tools to perform that particular task...but I have no reason to fix the tube until after the rim is fixed and I don't see myself having time to get the rim down to Lahaina until Saturday because I work during the day all week. Fooey. I walked home from work today. That was a pretty nice time. The sun was setting as I was walking so it wasn't too hot and the view is always nice. Even today, when it was quite voggy and hazy.

When the winds are out of the south/east the volcanic emissions from the Big Island volcanoes blow up and the air gets pretty shitty. It's not fun to breathe and the air is heavy. It was like that all of last week and it's supposed to keep up until Wednesday or Thursday. This makes me unhappy. My forehead leaks a lot when the days are like this. It's also pretty shitty to sleep because there are no cool, north/west trade winds blowing. It's not all fun and games.

I might jog down to work tomorrow. You know: keep the body guessing. F, I need to get that rim fixed......

My iPod has decided not to work anymore, too. The clickwheel will no longer function. So, I can charge it. But I cannot use it. Steve Jobs can go choke on a pretzel. I treated that thing like royalty and it's only four years old or so...yet now I have to buy a shitty new nano that's got some stupid ass touchscreen that I'll probably break within six months. Fuck apple. They need to know when they have good things, like simple, metal-encased iPod nanos, they should KEEP MAKING THOSE. F technology, maaaaaaan.

A new iPod isn't high on my priority list right now, however, because student loans were paid just a minute ago and I just scooped some BONNAROO tickets on Saturday and rent is due next week so my discretionary spending account isn't quite as large as it usually is. When the rent comes due each month I just cut a check...but my roommates are usually a bunch of delinquents there's at least one or more each month who won't pay without threats of broken legs. Suck on eggs, fellas. It all works itself out in the end; I'm just much more comfortable KNOWING I can pay rent than hoping they'll each actually come through on the first of the month, like, you know, normal, decent people do. I live with rapscallions, I tell ya..

Besides, what better way to kick off March than by buying a new iPod. yipee.................fudge.

Cheers.

Something to get you giggly prior to your weekends..

Genius.  Pure, unadulterated genius.  I run into a lot of people who don't know Adam Sandler comedy.  A couple of people recently, when we started playing this, were like, "wait...where's the video?  It's just guys talking?"  Yes.  Have some god damn imagination.  Not everything has to be shitty and overdone like Bedtime Stories.  If there was a video I hope it would have a shitty mascot costume like the penguin in Billy Madison or Chubb's shitty fake wooden hand in Happy Gilmore.  You know, real comedy.  

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On a somewhat tangented course, but trust me, I'll bring it back around, this goes out to loyal reader M.Closson: If Bonnaroo isn't in the cards we'll just have to find some more music to hit up this summer.  Mountain Jam, maybe?  Or just another show.  Hell, we could just head out to the ragoo festival on Peaks.  See what I did there?  It's funny, you know, because it's bigger than a normal sized hat.  It's an oversized hat. Cheers.

Bicycle Deux..

My old cruiser broke down a couple few weeks ago. That's happened since I fell off the blogging wagon, sorry for bringing you folks late to the party. I broke a spoke on my back rim and the tire started to rub on the frame. I didn't take much notice of this because the thing was a piece of shit anyway so I figured a little rub wouldn't make it much harder to ride that it already was. This small rub, however, continued to get worse over the next couple of days and the next thing I knew I was riding to work one afternoon and I kept hearing ::PING:: ::PING:: ::PING:: with my headphones blasting and my back tire got all shaky shaky and I stopped to find that had snapped almost all of the spokes off of one side of my rim. Shucks. I still managed to get to work without incident but there was absolutely no way I was riding it home. I started leather tramping home pushing my baby blue (never leave a fallen soldier behind, I say..) when, luckily, a friend with an SUV saw me walking and looped around and brought me home. YAY!

I still haven't got a new rim yet. This isn't to say I've been walking and hitchhiking and taking the bus everywhere. Actually, I've never stopped two-wheeling. First I hopped on J.Mac's bicycle for a couple few days (probably more like two weeks but days run together and I haven't really been paying attention..) until another one of my roommates finally got around to finding a job and he needed it to get to work. So, now I ride this gem:

Badass, right? One of the bartenders at Hula mentioned he had a tandem bike that he used to ride with his wife and J.Mac and I decided it would make for a hell of a goof off day to cruise that thing around all banged up on a day off. And it was a hell of a good day when we got around to it about a month ago outside of the fact I got a little squirrely on the handlebars and almost led us into a head on wreck on the highway when we were going about 20mph, but that's neither here nor there because we're still alive and kicking..........

We've had it ever since and the guy said when we borrowed it I could keep it for as long as I wanted, so when I gave up Jon's bike I just hopped on that thing and haven't looked back. The looks I get are priceless. You don't see a lot of tandems out here, and you certainly don't see a lot of people riding a tandem solo. Loner, you may say? Tell me something I don't know.

This just adds to my mystique. Now not only am I known by some as “the guy who's always riding his bike,” I've become “that idiot alone on the tandem bicycle.” Fitting, I'd say. The things a hell of a lot nicer to ride than the old cruiser I have. The guy had the frame sent from the mainland and then more or less tricked it out once he got it here a few years ago. It's got a climbing gear on it so hills are a breeze and it's a heavy ass road bike so once I drop her into the high gear I absolutely crank. He even had clipless pedals for it; that's some serious shit. Hell, it's even lighter than that blue piece of shit, if you can believe it. I'd say upgrade, both mechanically and goofily.

Chances are good the blue bird is headed for a dumpster and the Trek Double Track T-100 will be my mode of transportation for the next couple of months. I make due with what I have...............Cheers.